


Beneath the Starry Skies

by LocketShoru



Category: Saint Seiya, 聖闘士星矢: 冥王神話 | Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas
Genre: AAverse, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Maeve (who exists in mythology but not in canon), Mirrorverse, Oneshot, Other, Persephone (who is dead), do i care? no, is this super headcanony and self-indulgent? yes, minor characters also include, this is really just backstory for the gold surplices tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:14:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22082422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LocketShoru/pseuds/LocketShoru
Summary: Memories haunt you, even thousands of years later. And it's possible to remember how it all began. Sometimes, a human just needs to ask the right questions to bring it all back up. And even rarer, it's safe to do so.
Relationships: Pisces Lugonis/Pisces Surplice
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5





	Beneath the Starry Skies

**Author's Note:**

> Please read AA before you read this, as this will spoil AA and then you will be sad.  
> Pisces = Icthýes. Capricorn = Caliburn. Leo = Nemea. Aquarius = Lukan. Scorpio = Ophion. Cancer = Murphy. I have a list of everyone, think that's everyone who's been mentioned. Literally everyone is either related or an inside joke, so you can probably reverse google them if I forgot 'em.  
> This wasn't on my spreadsheet so this was oneshotted in a sitting and fit of inspiration. Credits for the music and title go to HDSounDi on Youtube. Hell yea.

“We should give them personalities of their own, I should think,” said Caliburn. Icthýes looked up from their seat, eyeing their younger sibling, whose hands were covered in charcoal all the way up to their elbows.

“What gave you that idea?” they asked. “I should like to know your reasoning.” They set down their own quill and parchment, where they had been sketching out designs. Caliburn was reasonable and generally had good ideas - they weren’t Ophion or Murphy, which was a small blessing in the quiet drawing-room they had found a sort of peace in.

“Ah, well…” Caliburn bit their lip, debating for a moment, before smiling. “If we’re going to have immortal, unbreakable servants to make the Underworld a little nicer and easier on everyone, shouldn’t we at least make them interesting? We have forever, and they should be allowed to liven things up.”

“Cal, the last thing we need is another type of creature that humans can seduce,” they replied, flatly. “Remember the humans, they always try to seduce first and ask questions later. Do you not remember how it usually goes?”

“Yes, well… We can build them to be able to do that, too, Mother already said they need to be perfect in every way. That includes being able to dance with humans,” and Caliburn smiled, slow and soft and eternal, “And so perhaps having the personality to be able to think up their own ways around issues. What is the point of a few hundred servants, if they cannot think for themselves, and not always come up with the same idiotic answer?”

Icthýes considered the point, flaring their fins, ignoring as always the small _clink_ of their kamui with the movement. “I suppose so.”

Beltane. The first true day of summer, when spring was beginning to crawl back into the world again, when Demeter called her daughter home to Olympus. Persephone hadn’t wanted to go, of course, she never had; but they didn’t need her supervision for another few months for their current project. A few of their Surplices were already complete, and more were on the way, and yet even some of the eldest ones were more than interested in helping the siblings create more.

Icthýes was in the stables, coaxing a skeletal horse with fishbone-fins out of its stall, to be saddled and braided with grass and flowers for the Hunt. That was how they always began Beltane, with the hunt, and finished with the feast on Olympus. It was likely, as it always was, that Ophion would challenge Dionysus to yet another drinking contest, and Lukan would await them to spectacularly lose and require aid to get off of the ground.

However, still. The world was not a peaceful place, and certainly not now, and the world seemed to be aching for another grand family drama to surface and tear it asunder until some poor hero harassed the right people into fixing it. They only hoped it wasn’t a Hermes demigod, this time, it wasn’t worth it.

“Hey, Iccy,” called a voice behind them, as they shuffled with the leather. They flicked a fin in acknowledgment as Nemea stepped out, short and wide and with almost bruise-dark rosettes splattered across their face. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

“Is something the matter?”

Nemea shuffled forward, lion’s tail flicking around their knees. “Chrys said that they’d heard on the wind that Athena’a really not happy with us,” they said, slowly. “She’s been shuffling around her Cloths, and she’s been talking to heroes, too. A couple of humans have even joined her. They made a fortress up by Athens, and the humans figured out that they’re far more powerful when they wear these Cloths like kamui.”

They paused. Athena had been militarizing her Cloths for a while now, taking them from servants to ones that doubled as machines of war. It would have been beneath their notice, but… “Did something happen to make us think she might be doing something else?” they asked, hesitant, debating.

“Word has it on the wind that she’s going to attack Mother on the Hunt,” Nemea said, and their voice was quiet, like they didn’t want to believe it. It was ludicrous. Gods didn’t attack each other directly. That was what heroes were for, and they were above such petty squabbles.

“Why?” Icthýes’ voice was a mockery, rolling their eyes. “Does she think she can win? She has been arguing about how we have treated the humans for a while now. We are the night, Nemea-my-sweet, the humans wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if we did not occasionally loose some monster on Zeus’ orders to keep them a game to play. If we did not provide the fear the humans need, they would revolt against the gods.”

“We’re supposed to be their safe haven and their sanctuary when they’re dead,” Nemea protested.

“And we are.” They nodded, finishing the last buckle and pulling themself up onto their horse, feeling the worn reins under their thick kamui gauntlets. “But someone has to go bump in the night, or the humans think we are not treating them fairly. We the gods protect them. We do such a good job they think we do nothing at all, so we have to give them something to play with to keep them from hating us. You are young, Nemea, you will learn this.”

“Athena doesn’t seem to be thinking that. What if she does attack Mother?” Icthýes rode over, holding out a palm. Nemea took it, and climbed up in front of them onto the horse, their back and a lot of fur against Icthýes’ chest.

“Then she learns the meaning of the Beltane Hunt, and why we Ride,” they answered, tone a little dismissive. “We go bump in the night. We slaughter what the humans can afford to go without. We remind them that there is more than they are out there. We are still gods… they need to remember that.”

The greatest tragedy, they might think later, wasn’t that they had lied, even unknowingly. Nemea was young, and sometimes older siblings had to lie to keep the peace. That was what Zeus did, anyhow, and Hades had always gotten the short end of the stick. The greatest tragedy wasn’t that Nemea was right, as younger siblings so often were, even when Icthýes didn’t want to admit it. 

The greatest tragedy wasn’t even that Athena had forgotten why the children of Hades and Persephone escorted their mother on the Wild Hunt, the darker version of Artemis’ every turning of the seasons, from Olympus to the Underworld and back again. Why she had chosen to disrupt it, in lieu of remembering why they had to.

The greatest tragedy was that she had disrupted it. Why she had pulled Persephone down from her horse of bone, splattered with the blood of innocent children, and stabbed her with a knife of Orihalcon, sparkling and golden, and brought her down. The greatest tragedy was that Icthýes had reared their horse and chased after her, trusting their siblings to save their mother, and had not been able to stop her. Had not been able to make her pay.

They managed to bring her home to the Underworld. Hades had not been expecting them. He was still there, still by his wife’s side, when Icthýes had finally returned.

They pushed open the door, fins drooping and covered in blood and mud from their knees down. Hades looked up. He stood up, pushing into a brief run to envelop his eldest child in a tight hug.

“Icthýes,” he breathed, and they found comfort in the dark scent of their father, and leaned into his collar. “You’re okay. You came back.”

“I could not catch up with her,” they whispered, finding their voice to crack on the last syllable. They pushed him away, ever so gently, and looked up at him. “Mother. Is she all right?”

Hades paused, and the look in his eyes, broken and angry, told them more than they wanted to hear. His hands on their hips, he stepped away, to reveal the room.

Their siblings, all eleven of them, had all found places strewn about the edges of the room. Hades had been the only visitor allowed by their mother’s side, as the best healers of Olympus, and some called in from the other Underworlds, did all they could. They allowed their eyes to scan over her broken, unconscious form. There was blood… so much blood.

“Is she going to be okay?” they asked, again, finding their hands already gripping the front of their father’s shirt. If he let go, they might have fallen apart entirely.

“Not for a very, very long time,” said a voice in the doorway behind them. They flicked a fin to acknowledge her, and turned. Her arms were folded, her gauzy wings were down, and she looked deeply angry, that anger tightly restrained. She looked less human than anyone in the room. She was a deity, too, in her own way. Maeve, the Winter’s Queen of Tír na nÓg. “I have a preposition, if you would hear me out, Hades…”

“What is it?” he asked, and his voice was tight. 

Maeve gestured to Persephone’s broken form. “She is broken far beyond what can be helped in the here and now. This is a wound that may take millennia to heal, if it does at all. Her power fades, Hades, and all you can do in the here and now is keep what’s left of her together. She is little more than mortal. If she was a goddess, she is no longer one now. Athena has murdered her, as divine as she was. But there is some-”

“She’s dead?” Murphy interrupted, from their spot where Caliburn was clinging to them. They were one of their younger siblings, all death and sea-flame and anger, the god of unforgiving and blackened kindness. Their voice was soft, and unbelieving, like they didn’t believe the very idea of spring could die.

“Yes,” Maeve answered, dipping her head. Nemea let out a soft noise, burying their face into poor Chrysomallus’ stomach. “But with time, perhaps she can be brought back. Athena will come here, next, to all of you. That is the next move on the chessboard. If she finds Persephone here - and she _will_ find her here - she will only finish her off.”

“We can’t move her,” Hades snapped, his grip on Icthýes tightening. They knew they should be reassuring their siblings, bringing the world back into order. All they could do, for the moment, was hang onto him, and try not to drown in their own raging seas. “I will not be part from her when she needs me.”

“Right now, Hades, she needs _help_ , and you cannot provide that.” Maeve sidestepped past him, descending upon the foot of the bed. “Let Titania and I take her. Persephone is broken. Her summer is not one with her winter. She was split when the two were farthest from each other. I will take her winter. Titania can take her summer. We will take her into Tír na nÓg, and she will run on our time. We are not Greek. We are so far north from you. Athena will never send her mortal servants or her Cloths into our lands. We would break them first. We can make her spring, and so perhaps, we can heal her. And in the meantime, Athena will never find her. You will not need worry for her safety when you take up your lances and answer Athena’s challenge. She is a war goddess. Fight her, Hades, do not allow her this slight against you. We will protect Persephone, until you have won, until we have been able to heal the damage done.”

Hades gave a choked noise, and Icthýes stepped closer, resting their temple to his forehead. It was a brilliant plan. It was likely exactly what Persephone needed. He didn’t seem like he wanted to accept the offer, but it was…. Honestly, it was the only option they had.

“Do it,” Icthýes said, and their voice came out stronger than they expected it to. “We will help you move her the moment she can be moved safely. She can stay through the Mirror while we avenge her, and set this right. Zeus will be angry with us. Mother can’t be there while that happens. Athena thinks she has murdered _my mother_. Let her believe that. Let the world believe that. Zeus will allow us our anger, if she is dead. Her resurrection would be a miracle, and we still would not be beholden to punishment for our revenge. Take her, Majesty. Take her, and heal her, and keep her hidden. Do not make me regret this decision.”

Hades leaned into them, slightly, and if he was about to start crying, well. So was everyone else, and poor Nemea was already openly sobbing. They were so young. They were far too young, for this.

Maeve nodded, and knelt at Persephone’s side, and the rest was a blackness of a Cosmos spell they had cast on themself, years later, forcing themself to forget what they might have never forgotten and been haunted by otherwise.

“She took my mother through the Mirror, and she combined my mother’s winter with her own, and made an entirely new being that didn’t quite look like either of them. As my mother broke her, so too did they break Tír na nÓg, and make it something different than it had been before. So we… Athena killed our mother, and we dropped our names. We put on our kamui and we rode to war, and we weren’t enough. Her Gold Cloths were far too powerful, and there was… nothing. There was nothing we could do.”

They felt his arms slip around their waist, and pull them close to him, and they leaned right in, taking a deep breath of his sweet, seasalt and armour-polish scent. They slipped a hand into his ponytail, tangling the locks around their fingers. “So we fought. And we lost. Athena’s Pegasus Saint stabbed my father and almost killed him too, and we retreated all the way back to Elysium, where he too, might heal. It was not as bad as Mother, he only was restricted from doing much with his physical form. He could still lead us, but there were… restrictions. And Zeus was angry. Zeus was ever, ever so angry at us all.”

The laugh that bubbled out of them was brutal and clipped and yearning for the ability to turn back time and make it different. But if they had, perhaps they never would have been here, their mermaid’s tail resting as the waves lapped up at their scales, in the arms of a man they could never have dreamed up into their life. “He forbade that the gods use their metal servants for war, like that. We had to bind them to humans, so that when the humans died, the fighting would stop. It would restrict the Gold Cloths a bit… And then we discovered that they too had personalities, like our Surplices did, like the Surplices we _made_. She did not just kill my mother. She had the audacity to steal our ideas and reinvent them and claim them as her own, too. My father was angry, so very angry, and he was not thinking properly, and someone had to keep the Underworld running… I stepped up, and maybe I should not have, but something had to be done. I gathered my siblings, the twelve of us, the twelve godly children of Hades and Persephone. We bound ourselves to our kamui, and dropped our names in favour of titles. We let her believe we died of grief, and we reemerged as mirrors of her Gold Cloths. To so perhaps balance them, and counter them, and play the game she was but better.”

He reached down and stroked their hair, sea-green and curly under the dampness of the water. He wasn’t saying anything, and that was good - they would’ve remembered he was more than listening, that they really did have an audience, that he might remember this, later. They didn’t think they had the courage to tell this story twice, or ever revisit it. 

“I… do not know if my siblings can unmerge, if they can reclaim their godly forms once more, or if they are now forever Surplices, if they have forgotten who they truly are under the metal. But if I can… perhaps they can, too. Perhaps there is still a way to save Gemini. Perhaps maybe, just maybe… Lugonis, my love, do you think we can still bring her home, again?”

They looked up, finally, from where their head was resting against his chest, under a sky filled with stars, more stars than there had been in many years. His face showed open concern, eyes a little wide, plump lips a little too flushed, his hair better done than it had been in years - and still dishevelled, and they weren’t sure if they would ever allow it to be anything else. 

“Yes,” he said, finally, and his voice was a rope thrown to a god drowning in their own raging tides, and they reached for it, as he pulled them up to look him in the eye as he kissed them. They let him go after a moment, staring up at him. “The wars will end. They’ve _got_ to. This won’t be our reality forever. At some point… We’ll bring her home, and we’ll make it right. Cici-” He paused, debating. “Icthýes, or… Iccy. Yeah, Iccy. We’ll bring her home, and we’ll apologize that she missed our wedding. Yeah, I… There’s still hope, my love. And, I’m glad you told me.”

He kissed them again, and they didn’t think too hard about how foreign their original form felt, now, after thousands of years as the Pisces Surplice. They would merge again with their kamui and become the Pisces Surplice again before dawn broke, but they had also _just_ gotten married to a mortal man who might not remain that way, if they won, if Athena could be stopped before they were too deep into the Holy War to back out. Before they lost the Judges again, the demigods that kept their peace and company. Before the world ended again, and left them with the fragments. 

Lugonis’ kiss was still better than Elysium, and it didn’t matter how many times they did it, as a Surplice with little more than airspace to answer him or as a deity who could be so much more than almost-human. Their hands drifted to his neck, thumbing over his gills, and they answered his kiss with their own.

They were only the Surplice of the Twin Fish, in the end. Only Icthýes, eldest child of Hades and Persephone, once upon a lost, mythological time. They were only Pisces, really, as their husband was only Lugonis, and would never be anything else to them, and neither of them had to be anywhere else until dawn. This was their night, beneath those starry skies that whispered a time before now, and the world could break and the world could be remade, but remember this as it is: the world, held still by an understanding not quite human, and far beyond that. Far beyond anything else, but love.


End file.
